


Tony Stark Is Tired

by Crumbles_Of_Reality



Category: Marvel, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Because honestly Tony and Natasha, Brief PTSD description, Drabble, Fluff, Fluff Drabble, Insomnia, Nightmares, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Civil War (Marvel), Something I've been wanting to write for a while?, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Tony-centric, stupid Marvel writers, uh, would get on so well together if the writers didn't FUCK IT UP
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-24
Updated: 2017-08-24
Packaged: 2018-12-19 07:50:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11893257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crumbles_Of_Reality/pseuds/Crumbles_Of_Reality
Summary: Tony Stark is tired. He wakes up all too often in the middle of the night, shaking from unknown night terrors, clenching his fists and grinding his teeth.Natasha Romanoff is also, unsurprisingly, tired. She wakes up haunted by her past, music echoing in her ears and dancers swimming across her vision.Sometimes, the only way to do things is by sipping tea and talking it out.





	Tony Stark Is Tired

**Author's Note:**

> Hey! If you're a anti Tony, gET OUT. I will legitimately fight you using data from comics and the MCU. 
> 
> If you're a Tony or Nat lover, welcome! I've been wanting to write this for a while, please enjoy!

Tony woke up sweating with a heaving gasp, the feeling of water filling his lungs leaving him all too slowly. He panted in his bed for a while, taking fistfulls of sheets and clenching them tightly so his hands wouldn’t shake. The steady glow of the arc reactor was what grounded him every time after one of these nightmare-ish episodes, ironically enough. The very thing haunting his dreams also reminded him just who he was.

 

It had been so long ago that he had been in Afghanistan, and yet every single moment there- the humid air, the heavy smell of iron, the salt of sweat stinging his eyes- was clear, not a second out of place. He didn’t even have to think to feel his lungs screaming for air as he was dunked under water for the tenth time, or to feel how hoarse his throat would be from screaming.

 

Slowly, he breathed in. And out. In, and out. Five times, and then he slipped from his bed and out of the messed covers. His feet touched the cold hardwood floor and he shuddered, taking a moment to adjust to the temperature before going to get his “I Just Had A Nightmare” outfit.

 

“Jarvis? You- ah, anybody awake?” Tony yawned halfway through his question, words warping as his eyes squinted shut for just a moment. He stepped into his bathroom, getting his pink robe and slippers- a gift set from Steve that had made him snort at first, but soon the ironic wearing of the pink outfit faded to content when he cuddled inside it.

 

“Current heat signatures in the building show that only Miss Romanov, Sir, who appears to be suffering similar problems to you,” J.A.R.V.I.S. replied smoothly, british accent cutting through the silence only to disappear seconds later. Tony only grunted in thanks before walking into the elevator and pressing the button to the main floor.

 

The door opened silently (because that weird ding noise was over-rated) and already Tony could see Natasha’s frame on the armchair. She was holding a steaming mug, hair shrouding most of her face and hands clasped around the ceramic a little too tightly for it to be normal. Her eyes barely moved to him, but she made a small attempt to smile before dropping it.

 

“Oh how the mighty have fallen, am-I-right?” Tony smiled. It was basically a routine for them now- one of them wakes up first and comes down to wait for the other (secretly hoping that maybe they _won’t_ , and that they got a good night’s sleep). “And by mighty, I mean us. We’re obviously the queens of this team.”

 

Natasha raised her eyebrow, and Tony quickly re-thought his statement. “Of course, I’m a jester. Or a rogue. _You_  are the queen. Too much? Probably, right? Well, it doesn’t matter, it’s totally the truth. Also, you are _just_ the team member I’ve been needing to talk to, you should see the specs I’m working o-”

 

“Tony, take a deep breath. You don’t need to talk to be here, just,” she handed him a cup of tea from seemingly nowhere, smiling genuinely now and pressing it onto his palms, “Drink your tea.”

 

“Right. That’s probably a good way to get me to shut up, huh? You don’t wanna hear about the spec p- you know what? I’m too tired for this. Silence is nice,” Tony sighed sleepily and curled further into the couch, letting the huge collar of the bathrobe smother him.

 

For a while they sat in a comfortable quiet- both of them quietly sipping expertly made tea and staring into nothing, evaluating their nightmares each by themselves. It was almost too much- the soft presence of Natasha traveling through the room and getting right under Tony’s skin ( _sensory overload_ , he told himself), until his subconscious pushed him to speak.

 

“So these specs, right? Well, I’ve been thinking,” he grins when Natasha groans into her mug and rolls her eyes- Tony loves it when she opens her emotions to him, and even feels a little bit proud that he seems to be one of the very few who gets to experience them. “I’ve been thinking- for the Widow Bites, I can up the voltage by a bit so that when we face more super-human opponents it’ll be a little easier to take them down. Whad’ya say?”

 

“That’s amazing Tony. Honestly, it’s so incredible what you’ve done for this team,” Natasha says gently, and Tony looks up at her in confusion.

 

“What are you talking about? It’s the least I can do for being a shitty teammate,” he replies, recalling the many times he disobeyed direct orders on a mission. Steve was always yelling at him to do _just_ the wrong thing, and Tony would always have a better way. It wasn’t his problem if that meant himself being a casualty.

 

“Tony, listen. You’re the exact opposite of a shitty teammate. Honestly, I don’t know what we’d do without you. Well, to start, we wouldn’t be in a tower with billions of dollars at our disposal- we wouldn’t have amazing technology to better our missions, or a teammate as tough as iron. We wouldn’t have Tony Stark, and I don’t mean that stupid persona you put on for the press. Tony, you really do amaze everyone on this team, and we _appreciate_  you. Each of us have different ways of showing that appreciation, but it’s all there,” Natasha sets her tea down on the small coffee table in between them, reaches across the empty space, presses her hands against Tony’s, “Thank you, Tony. Now shut up and enjoy your tea.”

 

Natasha sits back down with a shy smile, once more grasping her tea a little too tightly. It reminds Tony that everyone on the team is just a little too human to be the cold, clean-cut superhero you see on the television.

 

Tony Stark enjoys a cup of tea with trained super-spy Natasha Romanoff in the unholy hours of the morning, both of them haunted by their past, but willing to set their differences aside to make a better future.

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave a Kudos and Comment if you enjoyed!
> 
> Also, I couldn't help but draw Tony like I described him in the fic- please tell me if there are any troubles with the image I uploaded here, it should be right at the end of the fic.


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